Cubic Landscapes Are the Stuff Dreams Are Made Of: “You don’t need a totem in the fantastical worlds of Petey Ulatan, because it’s obvious that these twisted landscapes are dreams. Inspired by the iconic bending city scene in Christopher Nolan’s Inception and fueled by B.O.B.’s public comittment to Flat Earth Theory, Ulatan bends already stunning landscapes into physics-defying cubic formations that look like what you’d see in a Star Trek holodeck simulation if you zoomed out.”

How walking in the woods benefits your health:“Studies have confirmed that spending time within a forest setting can reduce psychological stress, depressive symptoms, and hostility, while at the same time improving sleep and increasing both vigor and a feeling of liveliness. These subjective changes match up nicely with objective results reported in nearly a dozen studies involving 24 forests—lower levels of cortisol and lower blood pressure and pulse rate.”

How cutting edge science is bringing buildings to life: “Applying biological concepts such as ‘living’ and ‘breathing’ to buildings, means talking about analogies; and whenever we take analogies from one system to another, it drives innovation and thinking. The technology involved might be marginal at present, in its infancy, but, trials and inventions are absolutely necessary in this new world of resource constraint and climate risk.”

Paris Wants to Make the Seine Swimmable by 2024: “By 2024, the River Seine in Paris will be clean enough to swim in. That’s the grand ambition declared by Paris’s City Hall this week. Parts of the Canal Saint Martin, which flows through eastern Paris into the Seine itself, could even be fit to bathe in as early as 2017 should the proposed cleanup go according to plan.”

44% of US honeybee colonies died off last year: “After a few years of hopeful signs that America’s bee populations might be bouncing back, there’s some bad news for the insects: over the past year, the USDA has found, over 44% of honeybee colonies have died off across America. While it’s slightly lower than the 45% losses seen in 2012 and 2013, it’s disappointing considering that the colony loss rate over the past two years had shown signs of improvement, with losses of only 34%.”

About

AHBE LAB is a forum for exploration, inquiry, and collaboration. It is a place to share who we are, what inspires us, what we are dreaming about. We hope you enjoy this glimpse into our design process.